Rabenstein and Kirov to host UIAA World Championships in Lead and Speed

26 Jun, 2014

Rabenstein to host Lead World Championships in 2015 (Photo: Lukasz Warzecha for UIAA)

The UIAA Ice Climbing World Cup spans six countries.

But bragging rights to be the world’s best competitive ice
climber is reserved for the athlete who wins the UIAA World Championships held once every two years.

In 2015, the championships are being held in two different places.

Rabenstein, Italy will host the Lead competition while Kirov, Russia is where
the Speed event takes place.

Organisers for the Rabenstein competition are hopeful that
the weather gods will be kind to them after this year’s regular World Cup
competition was cancelled because of heavy snowfall and danger of avalanches in
the mountainous region.
The UIAA Ice Climbing Commission which met earlier this year
in Paklenica, Croatia is in the process of overhauling the way the World
Championships take place in an effort to raise the profile of the event as it often gets lost amid the annual World Cup competition season.

One of the changes being considered by the commission is a
bidding process, starting in 2017, for local organisers who want to host the
World Championships as a standalone event.

There are plans to have the event televised. Currently
competition events are only available through live-streaming on the Internet.